


Merry Christmas Detective

by Traykor



Category: Dark Parables (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Interactive Fiction, Riddles, Twine game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 22:05:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17010072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Traykor/pseuds/Traykor
Summary: On a cold winter's night, the Fairytale Detective gets a box.





	Merry Christmas Detective

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cyphomandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cyphomandra/gifts).



The cabin is full of shadows and dark corners today. The shadows creep up the walls and hide behind pictures, dancing behind the furniture to the waves of the crackling wood fire before you. The fire is just strong enough to keep out the chill of the snow outside, despite the drafty walls around you. The place is old, but it’s yours.  
It’s a rare day off for you, so you’ve chosen to spend it snuggled deep in a pile of blankets on your favorite chair before the fire with a new book and a pot of tea. The occasional pop of the fire and the rustle of the pages of your book are the only sound, the woods around you are quiet, sleepy themselves in their deep blanket of snow.  
The weak winter sun doesn’t ever quite banish the gloom up here, halted by the trees and the mountain behind the cabin, and you choose not to have electric lights to further keep the gloom at bay. There’s a generator out back to have power when you want it, but you prefer not to bother most of the time, content with the roaring fire and a few oil lamps.  
You’ve a gas tank for the water and the stove anyway. Simple things. Simple things are best when at home. Complex things remind you too much of work.  
You find not having too much technology around you helps, for when you need to cross over into the fairy tale realms, which seem forever stuck in a nebulous technology-less past.  
The cabin sits halfway up a mountain in the very edge of France that is almost Switzerland, just close enough to a little French village to be considered a part of it, but not so close as to invite visits from the neighbors. Your French is perfectly good, but still hasn’t lost that touch of English about it, so the village mostly ignores you as an odd ex-pat full of weird English ways, which is how you prefer it. It wouldn’t do for someone to notice that you regularly disappear for days on end.  
Especially when you don’t come down the mountain to do it.  
The only road up to here, a narrow, winding tree lined fork from the main road around the mountain, runs right up to the cabin and stops dead at nearly the front door.  
It actually should run right through it, but behind the house it runs on and crosses realms, out of this one and into the fairy tale lands, the remnants of an ancient portal connecting the two that still flickers to life when anyone approaches it from the road. Your cabin is meant to get in the way, a roadblock to keep wanderers from finding their way into enchanted lands and getting lost in magic mirrors or fairy traps or enchanted forests. It makes things easy on you though, as you and the horses can slip into the other world quickly and quietly whenever you’re needed. The gateway is the other reason for your lack of tech in the house though--something about it scrambles things like radio waves or telephone signals.  
You live alone--well, you and the horses anyway. There’s no one to interrupt your quiet reading. Others might think one would get lonely in a solitary cabin far from any neighbors, but you enjoy your peace and simplicity when not doing your job.  
Or saving the planet, which has somehow become your job, what the hell?

Sometimes, you think, being a chosen one has its downsides. Not least of which is that The Queen of the Elves likes seeing you get yourself out of situations enough to be only the least amount of help necessary when you need it. You suppose you should be glad you amuse her. It’s better than the alternative anyway, you’ve no interest in ending up re-enacting Tam Lin--or Thomas the Rhymer for that matter (though there at least you don’t seem to be the Queen’s type for that sort of thing. Thank the Goddesses above and below for that).  
The fast healing and physical toughness is nice though. You don’t really want to think about how much damage you would have taken on some of your adventures without the aid of the magic blessing bestowed upon you, the one that lets you heal faster than normal, resist magic at least a little, and take less damage when others attempt to hurt you. You’d have a great many more scars for one thing. And more broken bones. Why it doesn’t stop you getting knocked out so often though you’ll never know.  
Though the most useful part of being the Elf Queen’s chosen is probably the ability to make people ignore you.  
You still aren’t sure exactly how it works, but *someone* most certainly would have actually killed you, rather than lock you up or toss you down holes, or put magical barrier in your path, if not for that particular protection.  
The world probably would have ended too.  
More than once.  
So maybe the Elf Queen knew what she was doing when she laid eyes upon you, caught and brought before her (you’ve always been too curious for your own good, but only an idiot blunders underhill on midsummer) and declared that she needed a champion to set right certain ills that had befallen a sister realm. Not that you are ever, ever going to admit that in front of her. Or maybe out loud at all, because who knows when she can hear you or not? Magic Queens have many ways of spying. There are no mirrors in the house though. You have grown to dislike them, for all their use as tools of magic.  
Though sometimes it would be nice to have someone else to send out into the snow and across to the stable to look after the horses. You’ll need to do that soon enough, see to their food and comfort, before the sun sets and darkness sets in. 

Continue the story: [Merry Christmas Detective: A Twine Story](http://philome.la/TMcsock/merry-christmas-detective)

**Author's Note:**

> Riddles adapted from the book Alice's Puzzles in Wonderland. Because Lewis Carroll riddles seemed appropriate. The Enchanted Lake is from Croker's book of Irish fairy tales.


End file.
